Here it comes (It's all right)

Japanese head hunting firm Recruit forecast that Japanese companies will hire 932,600 workers next spring, up 13 percent from this year, while 436,500 university graduates are expected to hit the job market. That means there will be 2.14 jobs per job seeker. This is the highest ratio since 1992, when the Japanese economy was reveling in a stock market and real estate bubble.

(...)

In Korea last year, 1.6 million people sought jobs through employment support centers under the Labor Ministry. But only 770,000 of them were able to find jobs. That translates into a ratio of 0.47 jobs per jobseeker. A survey by the Korea Employers Federation shows businesses plan to cut down hiring university graduates by 30 percent this year.

The government does not create jobs. Businesses do. Over the last five to six years in Japan, the “Koizumi reforms” have led to a decrease in the number of government workers while increasing support for private sector investments and start-ups. So-called reforms in Korea have done the opposite, increasing the number of public servants, while government-run entities took away work supposed to be done by the private sector. The result of that is the difference in the job to jobseeker ratios: 2.14 in Japan and 0.47 in Korea.

For some reason, I doubt that anyone is going to see a point to keeping the doors to legal immigration as narrow as they have been.

Maybe the Prime Minister can go back to his Shimonoseki constituency, stand on the dock and shake hands as Japan's new Korea Wave washes in.

Akie-chan can do the introductions (she speaks Korean, yeah!)

And admiration for the "Koizumi reforms"...ok, still bracketed in quotation marks...from South Korea!